Dominique (Brigitte Bardot) is on trial for the murder of her lover, conductor Gilbert (Sami Frey). Was it a crime of passion or the logical endpoint in a life of selfishness and the inability to love? If Clouzot's better-known vision of cynical machismo in 'The Wages of Fear' resulted from source material in another masculinist cynic-critic, here the collaboration with a team of female writers flips those odds. When Dominique is accused of having passed round a copy of De Beauvoir's novel 'The Mandarins' in school, provoking the excellent line: "Who's on trial here, Simone de Beauvoir?" If that real-life parallel has a kind of pleasurable fourth wall quality to it, the film's very success in drawing parallels between its fictional narrative structure and the real world-specifically, Bardot's own position within French culture-that lead it to be overshadowed by the real-life incidents in Bardot's life that took place in the weeks leading up to its premiere: the real-life love triangle, suicide attempt and media circus, as Bardot was hounded by a combination of hypocritical paparazzi mentality, the brutality with which Clouzot treated his actors, and the impending threat of national service faced by new lover and co-star Sami Fry. In just one of these situational ironies, Bardot was accused by a prominent film critic, of in essence faking the suicide attempt as a pleas for attention, just as Dominique is accused-multiple times-in the film. La Vérité's point was proved.
But what of the film's mode of narration itself? While some have described La Vérité as Clouzot's Rashomon, the film's moral scheme is more binary: an alternation between the guilty-until-proven-guilty cross-examinations of the courtroom, in which Dominique (Bardot), on trial for murdering her lover, is presented as a selfish traitor to familial and societal expectations, the epitome of Left Bank decadence, amorality and liberated sexual predation, and the real 'truth' of the incidents which led to this moment. Clouzot has faith that cinematic narration is able to tell the story of 'human feelings' (the plea of her defense lawyer) in a way that's ruthlessly eliminated through the accepted-but no more 'true'-distortions of statistics, supposedly objective facts, of bourgeois legal judgement and the climate of 'public opinion' (the combination of judges, lawyers, jury and press). Framed as a series of flashbacks from Dominique's highly-publicized trial, these flashbacks occur, not so much from the perspective of any one character-though if they were said to be from 'within' that world, they would be those of Dominique-as from a kind of cinematic authority which both shows events (fact) and colours them with another kind of truth (emotion). For all of Clouzot's judicious refusal to use a film score as emotional or dramatic crutch, it's a piece conducted by Gilbert-the climax of Stravinsky's 'The Firebird'-that gives heft to the love story, framed in ways that burst in and out of the narrative frame: overheard in rehearsal, where Gilbert's perfectionist breakdown of the piece breaks us from the spell of emotional immersion; replaying that music in grainy footage of Gilbert conducting on multiple television sets seen in a shop window; and then soundtracking Dominique's return to Gilbert's apartment as if playing out the emotional swells of film music conventions, not from the perspective of the film itself, but from inside Dominique's head. Yet the film rarely sticks with Dominique as a 'first person'-she's seen (the Bardot image) and depicted, relentlessly narrated by others, and by the film itself, but not often given her own voice. Likewise, if the judge and jury are a rigged game, enforcing a pre-ordained notion of what constitutes 'truth'-the hypocritical, moralistic (not ethical) conventions salaciously revelling in the details of passion-Clouzot's own ambiguous depiction of the emergent world of youth culture is hardly heroizing, even if it, to borrow the legal pun, reserves judgement. Gilbert can certainly be read as exemplifying the hypocrisy of bourgeois masculinity-exercising erotic passion through a woman for whom he has intellectual contempt, before dumping her for the 'spiritual' passion of marriage to her sister (as Dominique puts it, 'he wants you to darn his socks'): his jealous rages, his possessiveness, his refusal to acknowledge Dominique's social needs while prioritising his own artistic vocation at her expense. In a sense, the courtroom framework enables such depictions to be left suspended, whatever the judgement of particular details-judgements that viewers are encouraged to make with and against those of the court we see on screen.
But what of the film's mode of narration itself? While some have described La Vérité as Clouzot's Rashomon, the film's moral scheme is more binary: an alternation between the guilty-until-proven-guilty cross-examinations of the courtroom, in which Dominique (Bardot), on trial for murdering her lover, is presented as a selfish traitor to familial and societal expectations, the epitome of Left Bank decadence, amorality and liberated sexual predation, and the real 'truth' of the incidents which led to this moment. Clouzot has faith that cinematic narration is able to tell the story of 'human feelings' (the plea of her defense lawyer) in a way that's ruthlessly eliminated through the accepted-but no more 'true'-distortions of statistics, supposedly objective facts, of bourgeois legal judgement and the climate of 'public opinion' (the combination of judges, lawyers, jury and press). Framed as a series of flashbacks from Dominique's highly-publicized trial, these flashbacks occur, not so much from the perspective of any one character-though if they were said to be from 'within' that world, they would be those of Dominique-as from a kind of cinematic authority which both shows events (fact) and colours them with another kind of truth (emotion). For all of Clouzot's judicious refusal to use a film score as emotional or dramatic crutch, it's a piece conducted by Gilbert-the climax of Stravinsky's 'The Firebird'-that gives heft to the love story, framed in ways that burst in and out of the narrative frame: overheard in rehearsal, where Gilbert's perfectionist breakdown of the piece breaks us from the spell of emotional immersion; replaying that music in grainy footage of Gilbert conducting on multiple television sets seen in a shop window; and then soundtracking Dominique's return to Gilbert's apartment as if playing out the emotional swells of film music conventions, not from the perspective of the film itself, but from inside Dominique's head. Yet the film rarely sticks with Dominique as a 'first person'-she's seen (the Bardot image) and depicted, relentlessly narrated by others, and by the film itself, but not often given her own voice. Likewise, if the judge and jury are a rigged game, enforcing a pre-ordained notion of what constitutes 'truth'-the hypocritical, moralistic (not ethical) conventions salaciously revelling in the details of passion-Clouzot's own ambiguous depiction of the emergent world of youth culture is hardly heroizing, even if it, to borrow the legal pun, reserves judgement. Gilbert can certainly be read as exemplifying the hypocrisy of bourgeois masculinity-exercising erotic passion through a woman for whom he has intellectual contempt, before dumping her for the 'spiritual' passion of marriage to her sister (as Dominique puts it, 'he wants you to darn his socks'): his jealous rages, his possessiveness, his refusal to acknowledge Dominique's social needs while prioritising his own artistic vocation at her expense. In a sense, the courtroom framework enables such depictions to be left suspended, whatever the judgement of particular details-judgements that viewers are encouraged to make with and against those of the court we see on screen.